Bittercoin failed transaction bills

Artist:

Location:

Linz, Austria

Location of the winning bidder:

Madrid, Spain

Full Category:

Equipment and Machinary > Equipment and material stores

Starting Price:

€20,00

Sale Price:

€20,00

Artist Bio:

Martin Nadal is an artist/developer based in Linz and studying the Interface Cultures program at KunstUni. In the past years he has collaborated in a variety of projects and taught some workshops related to art and technology. He is also interested in illustration and cinematography. His works have been shown at Visualizar 11 (Medialab Prado), Ars Electronica, AMRO Festival y Settimana della Scienza (Genova).

César Escudero Andaluz (LIC, MA, MFA) studied Fine Arts and Architecture & Design at the University of Salamanca, Visual Arts and Multimedia at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. Since 2011 he has been researching at the Kunstuniversität Linz at the Interface Culture LAB working in the field between users and interfaces.

Curator:

Joiner – Artist

Artist Statement:

BittterCoin is an old calculator machine hacked to be used as a miner validating the pending bitcoins
transactions in the Blockchain (Online distributed data base). BitterCoin combines Internet of Things, media archaeology and economy. The operations are displayed on the calculator screen and printed afterwards.

The Bitcoin was originally conceived as an electronic decentralized system for capital transactions. Each node (user) has the same opportunities to get a reward when validating a transaction.

In the last years, this system has triggered a competitive struggle where computing power has
become the most important variable for earning Bitcoins. This involves the use of large equipment, and computers farms spending physical and environmental resources, a struggle that benefits only the owner of
the most powerful and efficient technology. BitterCoin takes up this discourse in a rhetorical way. It works as
the most basic computer, increasing the time needed to produce Bitcoins to almost an eternity